liturgy of the seasons (4)
a weekly translation of Rudolf Steiner’s Seelenkalender verse
In 1912-1913, Rudolf Steiner created a sort of liturgy of the natural and spiritual year in the form of fifty-two short verses. Experience—my own and others—testifies to the powerful effect that a short meditation on the relevant verse throughout the course of the year can have in respect to awakening and sensitizing the soul to each season’s unique quality and gesture.
Below is Dr. Steiner’s original Seelenkalender, or “Calendar of the Soul” verse for this week followed by my translation into English. I have opted to follow, whenever a conflict arose, the spirit over the letter in my translation efforts, attempting to convey the “mood” before the propositional content.
FOURTH WEEK OF THE YEAR
Ich fühle Wesen meines Wesens:
So spricht Empfindung,
Die in der sonnerhellten Welt
Mit Lichtesfluten sich vereint;
Sie will dem Denken
Zur Klarheit Wärme schenken.
Und Mensch und Welt
In Einheit fest verbinden.
∇∆
I feel my heart of hearts:
so speaks the sentient soul
on sojourn in the sunlit world
she sallies forth on floods of Light
where thought lends warmth and clarity to sight
to then, in high communion, bind
the world’s body with the human mind.
It is great to have a new creative translator of these verses. This week's
is especially thoughtful.
It is extremely difficult and demanding work to translate the weekly verses into a foreign language. That is why it is of course also justified to handle the texts very freely. Rudolf Steiner often spoke about translation in the sense that one should not translate the words, but that one must go to the origin, to the ideas of the source text and then translate the meaning into the other language. May I make a comment on this last translation.
You translate Empfindung with sentient soul, that's ok. In the 6th line it then says "sie gibt" "she gives" and by she is meant the sentient or sentient soul. The sentient soul gives or lends warmth to the thoughts which brings forth clarity (to sight).
I m a native German and English is only my second language and I m not sure whether I understood your text alright or whether my comment was necessary at all.
Anyway thank you for your work. Ottmar